Hardware — Election Security Glossary

Election hardware is the physical equipment used to vote, to count, and to secure the electoral process. It includes optical scanners, ballot-marking devices, direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, ballot boxes, tabulation servers, secure storage media, and the seals, locks, and other physical controls that protect that equipment.

Why this category matters for election security is that hardware is where the digital and physical worlds meet. A voting system is at bottom a collection of physical devices. Every cybersecurity control in voting software is anchored in some piece of hardware that has not been physically tampered with. Hardware security failures (a chip swap, a connector reroute, a USB port that should be disabled but is not) can defeat every software control layered on top.

Hardware testing is part of the federal certification process. The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines include hardware-level requirements. Independent testing laboratories (the VSTLs) put voting equipment through environmental, electrical, and security testing before it is certified for use. Once in the field, the equipment is subject to pre-election logic and accuracy testing, and to ongoing chain-of-custody requirements.

The terminology in this category covers both the equipment itself and the procedures that govern it. The concepts here are tangible. They describe the machines, the storage media, and the seals that election officials handle every day.